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yes, but we're in the middle of the season right now. two weeks or therabouts til the new one kicks off.

Check the fist post to find the link to the spreadsheet, check the rules section of the spreadsheet to see how to join (pretty sure it's a case of "add your name to the spreadsheet"), and then wait a couple of weeks til the season ends and it's time for the next one.
I wouldn't recommend choosing a race yet, since you won't know what's available until closer to the time.

Nullkigan and I played our match tonight, Longus Barba(Dwa) vs Powgirls(Ama), it's a matchup that some have suggested favours the dwarfs and the result of this match would suggest they are right.

Nullkigans 'zons started off with receiving the ball, which suited me fine as I could attempt the usual 2-1 grind. The amazons started attacking in a wide line, looking for weaknesses in my defense, but wary of committing too many girls in direct contact with my own players. Thanks to having more guard I wasn't too afraid to leave my dwarfs strung out on a line with the runners acting as safeties. After a little back and forth with noone really gaining the advantage Nullkigan saw an opening on my right and got the ballcarrier to within two or three squares of my endzone, however he only had one amazon with as support. I got one of my runners in as an assist and the other blitzed the ballcarrier and picked up the ball. After a bit more shuffling and a failed one die blitz (BD without a reroll I think?) I managed to give the ball to a blitzer who with good use of GFI's could score in two turns. At this time most of the amazons was in my half and fairly well covered by my dwarfs. Last turn and Nullkigan had a chance to stop me from scoring with a one die blitz and two GFI's, luckily for me he has to burn the reroll on a GFI and the die shows attacker down. 1-0 to my dwarfs and the first time I think they have managed to hold off the other team from scoring in the first half.

Second half I receive the ball and bring on the deathroller, since I'm in the lead I can play a calm/boring game where I bunch up in the middle of the field with the ballcarrier in the middle, I know that with all the guard/tackle and the deathroller on the team I should (in theory!!) win the scrum. Nullkigan makes an attempt but about halfway in the round he abandons most of the right side of the field and gathers 6-7 zons around a lonely troll slayer, leaving me to have a somewhat leisurely stroll down his left side with my ballcarrier. My troll slayer gets fouled repeatedly, but he only gets stunned. My dwarfs, looking on in disgust, decides to show them how it's done, and fouls one of theirs to a badly hurt (or crushed hand?), and the deathroller BH one of the gangfoulers.

Turn fifteen I decide my masochistic troll slayer has had enough fun and walks the ball in, 2-0. There's a riot on the last kickoff and the zons finally manage to take one of the dwarfs out, MNG.

With no way to actually stop your wall of short beef, I had to try for the risk run. I admit I miscalculated the speed of the runners, and a turn-over from a GFI prevented me from setting up the screen I really needed.

Originally Posted by mrpier

Last turn and Nullkigan had a chance to stop me from scoring with a one die blitz and two GFI's, luckily for me he has to burn the reroll on a GFI and the die shows attacker down. 1-0 to my dwarfs and the first time I think they have managed to hold off the other team from scoring in the first half.

Worse still: this was a skull->death IIRC. On my only +mv player. Reroll'd to MNG.

Originally Posted by mrpier

Nullkigan makes an attempt but about halfway in the round he abandons most of the right side of the field and gathers 6-7 zons around a lonely troll slayer, leaving me to have a somewhat leisurely stroll down his left side with my ballcarrier. My troll slayer gets fouled repeatedly, but he only gets stunned. My dwarfs, looking on in disgust, decides to show them how it's done, and fouls one of theirs to a badly hurt (or crushed hand?), and the deathroller BH one of the gangfoulers.

I brought a bribe with the inducements so I could force you to score or have a player ejected regardless of all else. I didn't get to use it until the second half because you had too much guard for me to peel someone off for gangfouling. Despite about six fouls in the match, the ref didn't even bat an eyelid.

The return foul was a -AV. On one of my Blitzers. The smashed hand was just a standard blitz, I think.

Against seven players with tackle, six with guard and eleven(?) with block, there wasn't much I could do except try to stay out of the way of the inevitable Funeral March formation. For about four turns I rolled nothing but pushes.

The only real saving grace was that the deathroller managed to roll stumbles four times out of five. Until it finally sent someone off. Well, that and the spot of irony right at the end with a dwarf finally going down.

Division 3 - Monopole Magnates vs Salems Lot

Final Result: Monopole Magnates 1, Salems Lot 2.

I finally won a match!!!!

Mainly due to some lucky blocks and dodges in the second half. Full write-up to be added tomorrow.

Overall it was a pretty close run game. My choice to purchase a ghoul player, bringing my numbers back up to 11 after having lost both my wights in recent games, proved fortunate. He went on to being almost single handledly responsible for both my touchdowns! My hired star player Nekbrekerekh proved less able, doing little until he knocked himself out in a failed block in turn 16.

Jiiiiiim repeatedly tore openings in my central defence using his Sauri, but his skinks were simply not up to the game, failing several crucial dodges. This was compounded by 2 important failed blocks from his Sauri, which should have been sure things (double skulls despite a re-roll). The only run of luck Jiiiim had was in the first half, where he scored an easy TD using a saurus runner and skink cage. Although luck had little to do with this, more my failure at mounting a solid defence.

Not one to look a gift-horse in the mouth I used the opportunities presented to my team to score two TDs using my new star ghoul Wormgrinder. Both times he managed to dodge out of harms way and run in the TDs I needed.

The last few turns of my match against Gorm really did just provide a priceless lesson on the fickle vengeance of Nuffle. It was turn 15, only one turn left for each of us, and as Gorm said, my berserker had the ball and was within 3 or 4 squares of the end zone. Most of his players were well back at midfield, as were most of mine. I was slightly worried about him having one chance to blitz the ball carrier on his last turn, so I intended to blitz away a single thrall that was tying up an ulfwerener and a couple of linemen so that I could move them forward to provide a rudimentary screen. I activated blitz, went to throw the 2d block with the Ulfy, made the mistake of thinking "what could possibly go wrong?," and sure enough, Nuffle heard my thoughts and rolled up a pair of BDs for the one type of player on my team that doesn't have block.

This allowed Gorm to hypnotize one of my players, freeing up a thrall for the blitz on the ball carrier. I thought I was saved by the push. . . another mistake. He maneuvered a vampire into position on the other side of my ball carrier, nicely blocking him in. When my final turn came around, I managed a GFI to get a lineman next to the vamp and cancel out his assist, again giving me hope that I might yet score. Pop blitz again, have the ball carrying 'zerker throw his 1d block against the thrall, hoping that frenzy would ensure he'd go down and move me safely out of the vampire's tackle zone. . . and Nuffle repaid my hopes with a skull, ending the match. And, for good measure, the 'zerker went down badly hurt.

Worst of all, in retrospect I'm pretty sure that if I had simply moved the 'zerker to the touchline first before attempting that first block, he'd have been beyond even GFI range of any of Gorm's players. I'd be kicking myself, but the whole thing is just too damn funny. It was such a hilariously perfect screw that I can't be upset. :P

Take this lesson to heart, friends. Hubris is the sweetest of meats to Nuffle. If you think you've got it in the bag, he *will* come for you.

And the Munchers suffer another beating. 2 - 0 to Deesnos Dwarfs. Despite the diminutive size of the opposition, a sweltering sun forced the managment of the Munchers to sit in the shade, sipping on a glass of wine, calmly on-looking the slaughter that took place on the pitch. Two halflings were thrown, one submitting to hunger (he hadn't eaten for more than two minutes), on the endzone, handing the ball to a fine lady in the audience as he was carried off. The other one landed so close to a blitzer that he fainted, despite being told twice that the mean-looking, beer-smelling, heavily armoured little evil person was out of range. The rest of the team didn't really like the look of the dwarfs either and unanimously decided that every single little peck from the Chompers would be a perfect excuse to hang out in the dug outs and drink beer.

There was one heroic halfling that actually tried to play Blood Bowl, Tequila I think his name was. He actually killed a dwarf, jumping belly first on the stout fella (already lying on the ground)! Grinning widely as the ref led him off the pitch, he didn't see the apothecary nimbly putting the carcass back together.

GG Cacamas, and a well deserved win, you played well despite Nuffle's best efforts!

GG with Mootpoint's short stuffs: 2-0 to me in the end. After the bruising encounter with the Norse last time, it was nice that, for once, my dwarfs were up against opponents smaller than them. And they took full advantage :)

The first TD was textbook: I received, formed a cage, broke through the defensive line and ran in with my runner. The next kick off threw up an interesting weather change and sweltering heat meant 4 of my dwarfs KO'd for the next play. Against a skeleton defence, Mootpoint nearly responded immediately to my TD. Another textbook play: treeman throws halfling to clear area who lands perfectly and runs for the line. But, DISASTER! And TRIUMPH for me! The stunty needed to GFI for one more square to get the TD but, in those twists BB always seems to throw up, he fell flat on his face in the TD zone.

The second half revealed a fully restored Dwarven defence who had decided that "a little sweat never hurt nobody". The beatings received in the previous half had taken it's toll and Mootpoint could only muster 6-7 players to attack. Stung by the close call earlier, three dwarfs stayed back to cover any sneaky throwing of teammates while the others worked on reducing the Halfling numbers and retrieve the ball from enemy clutches. They tried to cage up but, when one of the two treemen took root, there wasn't much hope in it working. In desperation, another launch of a halfling was attempted. He landed, but on his head, so the way was clear for my runner to pick up, move away from the single halfling remaining on the pitch and stroll over the line for the second and final TD.

Final toll: 5 halflings badly hurt, the rest KO'd with only the treemen remaining standing. A filthy, underhand foul killed (!) one of my blitzers, but my apothecary saved him.
Bring on the Vamps!

Add your details to the bottom of the SpreadSheet, but as PW says we're less than halfway thru the current season so you'll need to either keep checking the thread or come back and look in about 2 weeks...

/edit - Results validated, DivA rolled on

Last edited by ntw; 15-06-2011 at 11:24 PM.
Reason: edits not worthy of a new post

Sadly the race choices for new players looks rather limited at the moment, particularly if we get any more new joiners for next season. If you hate the remaining few teams enough I'm sure a sufficient level of pitiful puppy-eyed whining could get the powers-that-be to accomodate ;)

I was watching Luther and sitting in the challange league lobby and blood bowl steam chat, and refreshing the forum every couple of minutes in case someone posted they wanted a game. Not sure about tireless, but "really fancied a game" would cover it.
In the end I got a game with Indefatigable Snoozer and, distracted by the telly, pretty much accused him of stealing my turn through some kind of evil witchcraft when actually I'd both-downed on my first block. Not my finest hour.

Sadly the race choices for new players looks rather limited at the moment, particularly if we get any more new joiners for next season. If you hate the remaining few teams enough I'm sure a sufficient level of pitiful puppy-eyed whining could get the powers-that-be to accomodate ;)

I'm moderately certain we'll see some drop-outs after this season, but I agree that if more than 75% of all "non-challenging" races are full, you might start considering when to raise the limit to 5 races.

That said, I'm surprised that so few people are picking Goblins. I find them to be a more capable team than Vampires, but that's probably only because my Vamps keep badly hurting my Thralls. Bloodsuckers.

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I'm moderately certain we'll see some drop-outs after this season, but I agree that if more than 75% of all "non-challenging" races are full, you might start considering when to raise the limit to 5 races.

That said, I'm surprised that so few people are picking Goblins. I find them to be a more capable team than Vampires, but that's probably only because my Vamps keep badly hurting my Thralls. Bloodsuckers.

Perhaps it actually would be a good idea to relax it to 5 now that all the new guys are in and a good spread of races already exists. I know why the fairly tight limit exists, it's to prevent everyone piling onto the most popular teams or the most effective ones. There seems to be quite a tendency towards the underdog teams here on RPS though, if anything the avoidance is of the 'boring' teams (read: Human).

Not that I have an ulterior motive or anything, wanting to ditch rats but not having a different enough team to ditch them for.

I considered switching to an elf team again before this season, but now I feel like my dwarves are coming into their right. That is being a bunch of annoying bastards to play against :p So I'll stick with them at least for another season.

Yes, these rats have served me exceedingly well, yes they've got me to the championship in successive seasons. But on the other hand their TV is horribly high (now into the 30k spiralling expenses band) so even in the championship I'm routinely giving away 400k in inducements. The other reason is always playing the risky luck-based game inherent to skaven slowly but surely frays my nerves away every match. It's starting to make matches as much stressful as fun, particularly when the dice decide to have a go at me (which they do all too regularly). When a game gets stressful, time for a change of pace.

I'd be very tempted to switch to pro elf, I have a rather nice single player pro elf team. What puts me off is a) they're not different enough from my skaven (I know they're more passers than runners, but same agility game broadly speaking) and b) if I switch I go down to the bottom division, giving me last dibs if my most desired team gets a free slot.

Part of the reason I fancy chaos is that I've forever felt slightly cheated on my skaven team, getting only one double and one stat-up in 22 level ups. Yup, that one-in-six chance of a double just never came through for me. So every time I level a chaos player and pick a mutation, I'm going to give those f***ing level up dice the finger. Or nurgle of course, I'm not discriminatory with my Chaos gods, though nurgle's lack of agility is rather prohibitive.

mrpier: Your bloody dwarves were annoying enough when I fought them a couple of seasons ago, I dread to think what they're like now.

It's starting to make matches as much stressful as fun, particularly when the dice decide to have a go at me (which they do all too regularly). When a game gets stressful, time for a change of pace.

Again, the dice will always shit on you -or at least that's my experience. The only teams where you can be certain [within reasonable doubt] of succeeding at something (and you've always got a chance of failing whatever), are rubbish at something else. So while you are pinning for more durability and reliability now, were you to make the switch to Chaos you'd soon enough end up wishing you could score 1 turn TDs and keep your opponent chasing your score-line (and Chaos aren't ACME durable either anyway).

The grass is always greener but I do understand that it's fun to change things up a bit.